Overview

A historically-based novel with authentic, legendary, & fictional characters interacting across the extraordinary panorama of the Bronze Age Collapse in the Hittite Empire between the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas. Diomedes, previously a hero of the Trojan War, joins the polyglot Peoples of the Sea to raid inland into the Hittite Empire during its final months. It is both a study of ancient mythic consciousness and an exciting adventure of love, archetypal journeys, character transformation, destruction, desperate survival, and the lived mystery of pagan rituals. It was a time of such chaos, that royalty was overthrown, palaces and temples were burnt, and the power of the gods was thrown into doubt, yet the ancient Great Goddess of the Cosmic Round, who had been suppressed, began to regain her former dominance. With the fall of the gods, the human psyche was radically altered. Diomedes, though prominent in Homer's Iliad-a warrior the equal of Hektor or Akhilleus, a thinker as cunning as Odysseus and as wise as Nestor, and the only man who dared wound gods-has seldom, if ever, been the chief protagonist in literature. He is given his due within. His own wandering adventures and suffering after the destruction of Ilios are traced as far north as Kolkhis (Colchis) in the Black Sea, through involvement with the last Hittite royal family in Anatolia, and as far south as Alasiya (Cyprus) in the Mediterranean. He ascends the heights of glory but also must descend into the dark Underworld in an attempt to save the one he loves. The Bronze Age Collapse was brought about by similar issues to those we face today-massive climate change, the control of wealth by power elites, the problem of runaway migrations, and wars of conquest.

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9781778297724

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Reviews

"Cover: In this well-written, absorbing novel, Nixon has combined thoroughly researched fact with highly evocative fiction to produce a gripping story set within the context of the collapse of civilizations at the end of the Bronze Age. -Trevor Bryce, Hittitologist & Ancient Near East Historian *****5 Stars The Diomedeia is a must-read for anyone interested in a cohesive integration of adventure, intrigue, spell-binding drama, and the history and cultures of early societies in which myth, ritual, and everyday life co-existed as a single entity. Gregory Nixon's book, subtitled Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire, has all of the above qualities in spades. The author has an almost fanatical commitment to historical veracity while maintaining and incrementally escalating the dramatic suspense central to Diomedes' adventures within the Hittite kingdom, all the while remaining responsive to the intimate ties between humans and their gods. -Fred Mensch *****5 Stars The Diomedeia tells the richly-layered, multi-dimensional, epic poetic tale of transformation in which the larger-than-life heroic warrior Diomedes, first introduced in Homer's Iliad, becomes a leading figure in the collapse of the Hittite Empire at the end of the Bronze Age. The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is evident in each of the many well-developed characters who play integral parts in the development of this story, lending to its remarkable depth and vision. -David Roberts *****5 Stars This astonishing book seems to come out of nowhere. I've never read anything quite like it. From the weave of both history & myth, a tale emerges that is raw & exciting, but also often vast & meaningful. One can feel the desolation occasioned by the drought that sets off the Bronze Age catastrophe, but the characters that occupy the foreground really commanded my attention. They are not just contemporary characters placed in a different setting, but characters from another time and place (the Hittite Empire, the Peoples of the Sea) who psychologically daily interact with their gods. Yet somehow they remain easily relatable. Suspenseful, rousing, and even a little mindbending! The whole thing was emotionally moving and sometimes purposefully funny. It often felt like I was reading an epic by a great new author. Warning, there's warlike violence but also a number of explicitly erotic scenes. -Douglas Kingsman *****5 Stars Unlike other reviewers, I am not equipped with any sort of knowledge or understanding of the Peoples of the Sea, the Hittites or the Bronze Age itself including the neighbouring cultures of the time, the deities that were prevalent, the hierarchy of rule. Nevertheless, that being said, I was ready for a different kind of read - and ""The Diomedeia"" did not disappoint! After all there were swordplay and brutal battles and torture and love and vivid sex and camaraderie and deceit and . . . well, you get the picture. My 'different kind of read' turned out to be quite the page-turner. -John A. Martini *****5 Stars Even the most cursory glance at the C.V. of Gregory Michael Nixon reveals a person with a long, amassed and often esoteric-sounding background in academia, research and writing. He most certainly reveals a flair and a passion for the period in question: that of the collapse of the civilisations of the Bronze Age and the uncertainties that follow from it. -Dee Marley"

Author Information

I have been writing all my life. Most of my adult life was spent as a university professor, so publishing until now has been all academic (but still successful). Once I retired, I returned to a novelistic venture I had been dreaming of since reading Homer's Iliad at 15 years old: bringing to life the further adventures of the hero, Diomedes. I lived in Greece for a year after my BA in Philosophy. During my later years, as an avocation, I studied the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, as well as theories of myth and ritual. I live alone in the Canadian woods by a big lake and like it very much.

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